Good as Dead tt-10

by Mark Billingham

  ‘Will that do you?’ Markham asked.

  ‘That’s fantastic, thanks.’

  ‘So, what about this wine then? Dinner… ’

  ‘Absolutely,’ Thorne said. ‘But I’ll need to get back to you. Merlot, right?’

  ‘Yes-’

  ‘I’ll call you.’ Thorne hung up and immediately began dialling.

  ‘Merlot?’ Pascoe said.

  Thorne shook his head. Long story. When Holland answered, Thorne gave him the name of their prime suspect and told him to check with the Probation Service, the DSS, whoever the hell would be quickest with the most recent address for Jonathan Bridges. He told Holland to call straight back with any information, to ask Brigstocke to organise a support team on the hurry-up, and said that wherever Bridges turned out to be living, he would meet him there.

  ‘Got what you needed?’ Pascoe asked, when Thorne had hung up.

  Thorne said, ‘Both of us, I reckon,’ and the two of them sat staring at the phone, willing it to ring.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  ‘I’m sorry about before,’ Akhtar said. ‘When I got so worked up. I could see that it was upsetting you.’

  ‘It’s fine, I understand,’ Helen said.

  ‘No, it’s not fine.’ He was still sitting at the desk, but the tension had gone from his face. He moved his chair a little closer to her. ‘I seem to have lost control over the way I respond to things. Does that make any sense?’

  Helen told him that it did.

  ‘I always used to think carefully about things first, you know? Whatever happened, good news or bad news, it would take a while to sink in and feel real, but these days everything is speeded up. Everything is more intense, much brighter, much darker. I’m absurdly happy or far more miserable. Very much angrier… ’

  ‘Your son went to prison,’ Helen said. ‘Then he died, was killed, so you’re not going to feel normal about anything.’

  ‘I suppose that’s right.’

  ‘Of course you’re not.’ She was still wary, aware that the mood Akhtar was in at that moment might not be the same one he would be in five minutes from now, but she needed to do everything possible to keep him where he was. To maintain the calm. ‘ This is hardly… normal, is it?’

  Akhtar shook his head, ran a hand slowly across the top of it.

  ‘One man is already dead, Javed.’

  He nodded, solemn. ‘If I was reading about something like this in one of my papers,’ Akhtar said, ‘I would despise the person doing it. I would talk about what was happening with Nadira and in the shop with my customers, and we would all shake our heads and tut-tut and say how disgusting it was, asking ourselves what the world was coming to and so on. I would be thinking about the people being held against their will, nothing else, thinking about their families. I swear to God, I would not give a damn if the man who was doing such things lost his life. I would be happy for the police to do whatever was necessary.’

  Helen pointed to Akhtar, then to herself. ‘This… is not you,’ she said.

  He asked her if she would like to watch the television for a while, but she said no. Much as she would have appreciated the chance to get lost for a while in something nice and mindless, she thought it was important to keep talking. At least until she was sure things were back on an even keel.

  As even as it was ever likely to get, at least.

  ‘You know, even on that first night when Amin came home, I did not get upset straight away,’ Akhtar said. ‘Nadira went to pieces as you would expect, the sight of all that blood, but I kept it all inside for a while, same as always. Even when I knew what had happened, when I discovered that this other boy was dead, I just thought about it. I was trying to understand, trying to work out what needed to be done and it was like all the emotions I should have been feeling were just laid to one side for later on.’

  ‘People do that,’ Helen said.

  ‘When he was killed, I did not even cry like a father should cry for his son.’ He shook his head. His voice had dropped. ‘Can you believe that? I felt ashamed that I was not like my wife, like the rest of the family. Nadira wept enough for all of us of course, rivers of tears, but still… I felt as though I was letting Amin down or something. Like I did not love him as much as I thought.’

  ‘Someone has to be strong.’

  ‘I did not feel strong, Miss Weeks,’ he said. ‘I just felt… inhuman.’ He glanced at the gun and sighed, he looked exhausted suddenly. ‘What’s happening now, all these feelings like bolts of lightning, this blackness… I think maybe I am paying the price for what I was like back then. You are paying the price too, and Mr Mitchell.’

  He stood up and walked to the toilet, and for a few minutes Helen was forced to listen to him voiding his bowels, shitting like it was water. When he emerged, Helen bit back her disgust and told him that she needed to go too. He took the key to the handcuffs from the tabletop and stepped towards her.

  ‘What about you?’ he asked. ‘When Paul was killed.’

  Helen wished she had said yes to the television. ‘I was like you,’ she said, eventually. ‘I didn’t cry straight away. I wanted to, I felt like I should be crying, but it just… didn’t happen. I made myself busy. I ran around like an idiot. I was trying to find out why Paul had died.’

  ‘Yes, you said. This was when you met Mr Thorne.’

  She nodded. ‘And I had the baby to worry about. I had Alfie kicking the hell out of me, and I’d spent weeks crying for no good reason anyway because my hormones were all over the place.’

  ‘You did cry though, eventually?’

  ‘Eventually.’

  ‘What did it feel like?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Did it feel good, I mean?’

  Helen thought about it, tried to remember. ‘Like finally eating something when you’ve been starving. But it tastes foul. Sour.’

  ‘Because I still haven’t cried for Amin,’ Akhtar said. ‘Not for the right reasons, anyway. Not because I’ve lost a son.’ He leaned towards her and offered the key. ‘There will be plenty of time for that though. In prison, if that is the way this ends.’

  Helen said, ‘Yes,’ and took the key, the ‘if’ ringing in her head.

  ‘Everything is finished one way or another,’ Akhtar said. ‘After what I did to Mr Mitchell.’

  ‘I’ll tell them what happened.’

  He shrugged as though it did not matter. As though he had already resigned himself to life in prison, or worse. ‘I will cry for Amin before this ends,’ he said. ‘I’ll cry for him when I know why.’

  FORTY-EIGHT

  ‘I’m just saying these things because someone needs to,’ Holland told him. ‘That’s all.’

  ‘Point taken,’ Thorne said.

  ‘We go in there half-arsed and it goes pear-shaped, Bridges’ defence team will have a field day.’

  Thorne drummed his fingers against the steering wheel. ‘Not as much of a field day as the prosecution’s going to have.’ He continued to stare out of the car window, towards the row of houses opposite, the green front door of the run-down Edwardian conversion, the bay window of the ground-floor flat. ‘All the forensics we’ve got… ’

  The SOCO who had been running the fingerprints from the Peter Allen crime scene had called Thorne on his way to Hounslow; the address Jonathan Bridges had provided to the DSS when he had last signed on. The officer had been disappointed at coming second to his female colleague, at missing out on the promised bottle of whisky, but Thorne had taken pains to let him know just how grateful he was for the information. If the ADAPT DNA match was unlikely to stand up in court, the fingerprint evidence certainly would.

  These, though, were things Thorne would worry about later on.

  Right now, he was more concerned with getting the information that might see Helen Weeks and Stephen Mitchell released than he was with putting anyone away for Peter Allen’s murder.

  ‘Never mind half-arsed,’ Kitson said from the back seat. ‘What if he’s armed?’


  Thorne glanced at his rear-view mirror. Kitson was sitting next to DS Sam Karim. ‘Nothing in his record about firearms,’ he said. He thought about the offence of which Bridges had most recently been convicted. ‘Everyone’s wearing stab-vests, right?’

  ‘It would be nice to know what was waiting for us, that’s all.’

  ‘If he’s even in there,’ Thorne said. He was almost certain that their prime suspect would not be inside, but he understood Yvonne Kitson’s concerns. She was speaking not just for herself, Holland and Karim, but for the support officers drafted in at short notice. The four other detectives sitting behind them in an unmarked Ford Galaxy and the two more at the back of the house had no knowledge of the connection between Jonathan Bridges and the armed siege in Tulse Hill; no understanding of the urgency or the disregard for standard procedure.

  ‘Be nice to know that too,’ Kitson said.

  ‘What do you want me to do, Yvonne?’

  ‘ Think. Just think.’

  Normally, there would have been a careful assessment of the premises front and back. Intelligence would be fed through to the officers on the ground via the kind of technical support that was being employed at Tulse Hill at that very moment. There would have been an open line of communication with senior officers back at headquarters, an adequate briefing and a cordon that amounted to rather more than a panda car parked at either end of the street.

  There would not have been a strategy formulated on the hoof.

  But Thorne could not afford to waste minutes, let alone hours. ‘I think I’ll just pop across and ring the bell,’ he said.

  Holland shifted in the passenger seat. ‘Gives him time to get rid of anything he might not want us to find.’

  ‘Nobody’s coming up with any better suggestions.’

  ‘If he is in there, he’s probably off his face anyway,’ Kitson said.

  Thorne reached for the radio that was sitting on the dash then opened the door. ‘With a bit of luck, I might not need you lot at all,’ he said.

  He zipped up his leather jacket as he crossed the road. Anyone watching from that bay window would have a clear view and Thorne wanted to hide the Met Police logo on his stab-vest. He walked slowly, aware that there might be eyes on him other than those of his fellow officers, conscious of the fact that he did not look a lot like the average delivery man and bugger all like a Jehovah’s Witness.

  A strip of paper beneath the top bell said Dawson. There was no name beneath the bottom one. Thorne rang it.

  Waited.

  If he had thought there might be anyone besides Bridges inside the property, Thorne would have made an effort to acquire the phone number. It was common practice to call the suspect inside and suggest that they come out of their own volition to avoid the possibility of other family members getting hurt. There was nothing to suggest that Bridges had so much as a girlfriend.

  Thorne did not care a great deal about Bridges getting hurt.

  He gave it another few seconds then took out his radio. ‘Not a sound, Yvonne,’ he said.

  ‘Like I said, he might be out of it.’

  ‘Makes our job even easier then, doesn’t it.’

  ‘I’m still not thrilled about this, Tom.’

  ‘It’s on my head,’ Thorne said. ‘Put the door in… ’

  A few seconds later, the doors of the BMW and the Galaxy opened simultaneously and half a dozen officers began running across the road. Two others moved quickly to the boot of the Galaxy then followed their colleagues carrying a metal battering ram.

  A little less polite than Jehovah’s Witnesses.

  Thorne stepped to one side as they crashed first through the outer door and then through the door to the downstairs flat. Thorne was only a few steps behind them, but it was not a large flat and by the time he had heard the first officer shout, ‘Room clear,’ it had become obvious that the man he was looking for was not at home. He started to take off his vest.

  ‘Bedroom clear,’ Holland shouted.

  It would have been nice of course, but Thorne had known that Bridges was unlikely to be sitting there waiting for them. He had made a decent attempt to clean up after killing Peter Allen, and whoever had employed him to do it would almost certainly want to do the same thing themselves. They would want Bridges well out of the way.

  It had already crossed Thorne’s mind that this might mean permanently. Sitting outside in the car, he had been forced to consider the possibility that there might be nothing but another body waiting for them. Another brick wall.

  Back to waiting…

  As he stood in the middle of the living room, he saw that someone had been living at the property until very recently. There were several empty pizza boxes by the side of the sofa, a TV listings magazine from the previous week, a pub-sized ashtray overflowing with butts. As the team filed one by one into the room, including those who had been ready at the back of the house, Thorne stared at the beer cans lined up on the mantelpiece, the labels all facing the same way. He remembered the neatness, the obsessive order of Antoine Daniels’ cell at Barndale.

  ‘What now?’ Holland asked.

  ‘Turn the place over,’ Thorne said. ‘We’re looking for bank statements, bills, mobile phone records, anything.’

  Holland didn’t move. ‘We need a warrant, sir.’

  ‘Again, Dave, point taken.’

  ‘Get a bloody grip, Tom,’ Kitson said. ‘He’s right, you know that. Without a warrant, anything we find is almost certain to get thrown out and all you’ll be left with is the shit you’re going to be up to your neck in. Is it really worth it?’

  Thorne swore and kicked out at one of the discarded pizza boxes. He had requested the warrant as soon as he’d been given the address for Bridges, and though he did not need one to enter the premises, he was not permitted to search for evidence until it arrived having been signed by a magistrate. He watched as a couple of the detectives dropped happily on to the sofa. There would be time for a smoke now, time to read the paper. They might even be able to nip out for a bit of lunch.

  ‘We’re thinking about you,’ Kitson said.

  Thorne looked at his watch. ‘It’s nearly three o’clock,’ he said. ‘We should have this warrant here any time, I reckon, half past at the latest, all right?’ He told Samir Karim to chase it up, then when Karim had stepped out, he said, ‘But aside from the people in this room, who’s to say what time we actually started searching? We do it now, but anybody asks, we waited until we had the warrant. Fair enough?’

  Thorne studied the faces of the officers in the room. There were a few sideways glances, some awkward shifting from foot to foot. Holland kept his head down.

  ‘Listen, you all know about this business in Tulse Hill,’ Thorne said. ‘You know that one of the hostages is a police officer.’ There were nods. ‘Well, what we’re doing here might help to get her out, OK? I’m just asking you to trust me on that and do what I’m asking, because I’ll carry the can, and the fact is we really haven’t got time to sit on our arses waiting for a poxy warrant.’ He paused. ‘ She hasn’t got time.’ He looked around again. ‘Anyone unhappy with that?’

  If anyone was, they kept it to themselves.

  ‘Right, let’s crack on.’

  Thorne and Kitson took the bedroom, and as Thorne dug through drawers and reached carefully into the back of the flimsy wardrobe, he thought about what he had said to Holland. He felt bad for snapping at him.

  We’re thinking about you.

  He looked over his shoulder at Kitson, who was searching through the small cupboard beside the bed.

  She shook her head. Nothing.

  Thorne knew he was further out on a limb than he had been in a long time, but he could only hope, if his actions succeeded in getting Helen Weeks released, that the powers-that-be might overlook them. He was probably kidding himself, he knew that, with more than enough black marks against him already. The DPS had a file an inch thick with his name on, and the Rubberheelers wouldn’t need
much of an excuse to come for him.

  But what choice did he have?

  More choice than Helen Weeks, that was for sure.

  From the wardrobe, he pulled out a stash of magazines. Sexy Matures, Fit amp; Fifty. Underneath, a few tattered leaflets for the Scottish Defence League, a far right rent-a-mob who protested against the spread of Islamism at every opportunity and always seemed up for a good scrap. Thorne glanced at the misspelled ranting and wondered if money had been the only motive for the part Bridges had played in Amin Akhtar’s killing. It was something to bear in mind. It was not as if Amin had been one of Imam Shakir’s brigade, or even been particularly religious as far as Thorne could tell, but to the likes of Johnno Bridges and his SDL mates, such minor details had probably not been important.

  Paki meant towelhead meant terrorist.

  Pornography – political and otherwise – aside, there was little else to get excited about. There was certainly nothing that could be described as ‘evidence’ and the search of the property could only be deemed successful if they had been looking for dirty underwear and used needles. Thorne asked a couple of the support officers if they would mind hanging back to take delivery of the warrant when it arrived. He let the rest go.

  ‘Doesn’t look like Johnno was one for keeping much in the way of records,’ Kitson said.

  Thorne led Kitson and Holland into the kitchen. It smelled of something that had burned recently and there was an inch of dirty grease in the bottom of a chip-pan. Thorne leaned back against the oven.

  ‘What do I do now?’ he asked.

  ‘We put a watch on all the stations,’ Kitson said. ‘An all-ports alert.’

  Thorne knew it made sense, but guessed that they were probably twelve hours too late. Bridges would almost certainly be back in Scotland by now, or France or Finland or fuck-knows-where.

  Holland nodded. ‘And if we can’t get him, we get the information from somewhere else. Mobile phone provider, bank if he had one.’

  ‘Little shitehawk like Bridges,’ Kitson said. ‘He comes into a decent amount of money, he’s got to start spending it somewhere. Right?’